The Health Effects of Stress as We Age

Penn State undergraduate Kassi Bradburn interviews professor David Almeida about his novel, decades-long research into the role daily stressors play in the lives of people across the lifespan. 

Kassi Bradburn
Undergraduate student at Penn State, double majoring in Forensic Science and Biobehavioral Health with a minor in Chemistry

David Almeida
Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State

Transcript

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Mark Shriver: 

From Penn State’s Center for Human Evolution and Diversity, this is Tracking Traits

[MUSIC FADES] 

Mark Shriver: 

Hello and welcome to the Tracking Traits podcast. My name is Mark Shriver and I’m the co-director of CHED, the Center for Human Evolution and Diversity at Penn State.

Nina Jablonski: 

And I’m Nina Jablonski, the other co-director of CHED. Welcome to the podcast. 

Mark Shriver: 

Well Nina, we made it to the end of our second season.

Nina Jablonski: 

I know Mark! It went so fast, I can hardly believe it. Another season of fabulous stories!

Mark Shriver: 

For sure, and we’re ending with a topic I think everyone will find interesting; the effects of daily stressors on our health as we age.

Nina Jablonski: 

Definitely a timely topic. So many medical conditions have been linked to stress – and there are so many things to be stressed about today, for people of ALL ages. 

Mark Shriver:

On the positive side though, we do have people like David Almeida right here at Penn State studying the specifics of how all that stress affects our wellbeing. And as David shares in this podcast, the more we understand the relationship of daily stressors to our health, the more empowered we are to take actions that can minimize the negative effects. David is a Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and identifies as a “lifespan psychologist.” He’s a true pioneer in this field.

Nina Jablonski:

He sure is, and in fact Penn State is actually the birthplace of lifespan psychology.

Mark Shriver:

Yes, that’s something that comes up in the podcast conversation. This is a field of research that began right here in the 1970s. 

Nina Jablonski:

One of the things I find fascinating about David’s findings is that he is actually mapping not just the negative effects of stress, which is what we’re so used to hearing about, but also some of the positive aspects of stress.

Mark Shriver:

Yeah, David is trying to figure out the purpose and function of our bodies’ stress responses, and that inquiry is yielding some thought-provoking insights. For instance, he’s observing that stressful situations can cause us to reach out socially. So in effect it can promote more meaningful relationships with others, which has been observed to have real measurable health benefits.

Nina:

Stress can also make us more adaptive to change, and can serve to sharpen our minds. In fact, David is finding that people who continue to manage daily stressors as they get older can actually experience improved cognitive functioning as they age.

Mark:

That sounds a lot better than getting dementia. 

Nina:

Absolutely. And these are just a couple of the many interesting things that David shares in this episode, as he’s being interviewed by Kassi Bradburn, who returns for a second time this season. 

Mark:

Kassi is a Penn State undergrad double majoring in Forensic Science with a Biology Option and Biobehavioral Health with a minor in Chemistry. She does an excellent job with this final episode of Season Two.

Nina Jablonski:

I just love the energy of this conversation. Kassi comes at it as a young person experiencing all the stressors that undergraduates endure at a university and David shares his perspective as someone who has been studying this stuff for decades. It’s just a great dynamic. 

Mark Shriver:

Here’s Kassi Bradburn interviewing David Almieda about the health effects of stress as we age.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Cassie:

Hi, Dave, how are you?

Dave:

I'm doing well, Cassie. It's good to see you.

Cassie:

Good to see you too. Thanks for joining me today. So, would you mind just taking a few sentences and describing what your research is?

Dave:

Sure. Well, I'm trained as a developmental psychologist and so that means I'm really interested in how people grow and change throughout the life course. And what I'm particularly interested in is patterns of change in daily stress processes. And I'm interested in, like how we experience daily stress changes as we grow older, but also how daily stress affects how we grow older, so how it affects our health and wellbeing.

Cassie:

Nice. Would you mind elaborating a little bit about developmental or lifespan psychology?

Dave:

Sure. So I identify as a lifespan psychologist, I'm quite proud of this. One reason is that this discipline originated at Penn State, Paul Baltes and John Nestlerode in the 1970s decided to expand what we mean by understanding how people grow. And so, developmental psychology is kind of dominated by child development or by gerontologists, people who study children or people who study older adults. And they really didn't talk much to each other. Lifespan psychologists are really interested in growth and change throughout the entire life. And so, one way to think about it is how do individuals grow, but also differences in how individuals grow older. And so the mantra is intra-individual change, but also individual differences in intra-individual change.

Cassie:

Wow. That's so cool. I didn't know that it started here at Penn State. That's awesome.

 Okay. You mentioned daily stressors. What would be the definition of stress or daily stressors?

Dave:

So, stress is one of these terms that, you know, is used a lot. It's used by common members of the public, but also scientists as well. So everyone's got sort of their own definition. And even, you know, you ask five different stress researchers, they'll have their own definitions as well. So at its most broad definition, I would say that stress is the pressures that life exerts on us and how we respond to those pressures. And so, one way to think about it is, how do we adapt to real challenges as well as imagined challenges? I'm really interested in both. Like, what are those challenges and how to define them and describe them, but also, what are our responses to those challenges? And those responses could be emotional responses, like getting frustrated, angry, sad, but they also could be behavioral responses, like, you know sleeping too much, eating too much, those sorts of things. And then obviously there are biological responses. So, what's happening under our skin, our body chemistry, in response to these challenges?

Cassie:

Yeah. I probably have my own definition of stress too that's grown or changed over time, I should say, from when I was in high school to now.

Dave:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cassie:

Definitely, probably my biggest response is frustration proceeded by crying, then proceeded by sleeping too much afterwards.

Dave:

Yep. And so sorry, that's a classic trifecta of a stress response.

Cassie:

(laughs)

Dave:

But there are reasons why your body is doing that. So that's what I find, you know,  really fascinating is that we have these responses and they feel unpleasant. They are unpleasant oftentimes, but it's also our body giving us some messages to do something. And that message could be “address the challenge, try to fix the challenge, take care of your body,” or you know, basically “get your body ready for a long term challenge. Store energy” and things like that. So that's probably why you're sleepy is because it's your body telling you like, well, this thing might last a long time so you really got to make sure you have enough energy reserves to handle this thing that's happened.

Cassie:

Probably explains a lot during finals week for me.

Dave:

Exactly. I'm not sure if that's helpful, but that's what your body's telling you to do.

Cassie:

Yeah. The day before finals, typically, I sleep a little bit longer than I probably need to.

Dave:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cassie:

So I guess in that sense, it means that stress has both negative and positive effects on our health?

Dave:

Yeah. If we could just start thinking about stresses having sort of these dual purposes, or the role of stress as adapting to challenge, I think that could be helpful in sort of handling the stressors. So, yeah. So the positive aspects of stress is that it'll alert you to a challenge. It makes you more vigilant. It makes you try to solve the challenge. But also we found that people who experience daily stress in their lives, as they grow older, they actually are better at cognitive functioning. So there could be something about stress that helps you solve problems. That might be good for your brains. That's something that we're really interested in. 

Cassie:

Wow.

Dave:

One more thing that we're really excited about, another benefit of stress (I'm really interested in benefits of stress these days). But another benefit of stress is that it appears to be like a social magnet. We know that having social interactions, social connections is really important to maintaining health and wellbeing. Well, when people experience stress, they're more likely to seek out someone else to talk about your sorrows to them. And so I think that another upside of stress is that it actually gets you connected with other people that I think will be potentially really helpful for you in the future.

Cassie:

Just from personal experience, I could definitely see how that would be a benefit. Not just in sharing what you are going through, but able to share the experience with another person. So, my classmates and I, when we have major projects or exams coming up and we're all like, into this little group discussing how stressed we are over finding research articles or getting a certain lab done, you know, being able to share it and realize I guess, that you're not alone in that experience…

Dave:

Yes.

Cassie:

…is a major benefit.

Dave:

Yes, absolutely. And not only is that social connection helping you deal with the stressor, having that exam or having that grumpy professor or whatever that stressor is, that also serves to create the social support system that is there that you can draw on later on as well. I really am interested and curious about how it is that stress really does attract you to be with other people and how adaptive that really is.

Cassie:

I know that you're very interested in stress in lifespan psychology, but what got you started into this particular topic? 

Dave:

Well, like you, I experience stress in my life and I'm always wondering like, why am I having this reaction to it? So, certainly, when I was a student, I experienced stress. But I have to say that it started when I was working in a preschool. That's how I worked my way through university. And I noticed like, how stressful it was for parents to drop their children off. And I also noticed, it seems the moms were a little bit different than the fathers. This might be too long of a story, but that got me really interested in the role of fathers and child development. I did my PhD on fatherhood.

And I was trying to understand, well, what is the role of fathers? What do fathers give to their children? And the more that I studied that, I also started understanding the role of children in fathers’ development. So what is it that children are doing that help their fathers grow? And so, all of this sort of started circulating around the types of stressors that children were having that sort of percolated into their father's lives and the types of stressors that fathers were having that percolated into their children's lives. And I wasn't satisfied with how we were measuring stress at that time. And so, I came across this beautiful study of air traffic controllers. And this study showed that at on days that air traffic controllers had more air traffic at the airport, or if the weather was really bad, when they came home, they had much more negative interactions with their children, compared to days when it was sort of easy at the airport.

And that just fascinated me, this idea that something that happened that day is going to sort of infiltrate the family. And so that got me really interested in, well, are there any other ways to study what I would call these naturally occurring stressors, because we really weren't interested in them at that point. So that led me to talk to this wonderful researcher named Rena Repetti. And she encouraged me to work with another researcher named Ron Kessler, who was doing this sort of naturally occurring stressor work. And so I started working with Ron Kessler and then that led to the type of work that I'm doing now. That was 30 years ago and I'm still doing similar type of work that started back then.

Cassie:

I  wouldn't have thought that just going to work one day and it being more busy than a different day would also impact how you act around others when you get at home and then how that would affect their lives as well.

Dave:

What I’ve realized as I've been doing this work for a long time…I mean, I trained as a psychologist. I'm supposed to be really interested in individuals and how individuals differ from each other. But what I realized is that no, I'm really interested in dates and how days differ from each other. And it is amazing, good days versus bad days and how people really differ from themselves dramatically from one day to the next. So that's the type of work that we do now is trying to capture how people vary in their experiences from one day to the next. I'm sure you might experience this, like some days are great. Everything seems to be going really well. Other days, not so much. And so, I'm just trying to capture those sort of patternings and see how they sort of change as people grow older, as well as how they, you know, affect health and wellbeing later on.

Cassie:

Definitely know the good days and the bad ones, that's for sure. But I think that's a really nice perspective to have as a psychologist. 

Dave:

For me, I think about how we want to make people's lives better. And as a psychologist, we want to change the person, you know? So we have interventions that come into therapy and we try to change the person, you know. And my perspective is let's just change a day. Let's just try to make a day better and start there. And I do think that would have tremendous health effects if we just could focus on, “How is it that we make a day better?” And it seems to me that it would be an easier thing to change rather than changing who you are completely. Let's just make yourself have a better day.

Cassie:

So stress and research, and research around stress has evolved a lot from, I guess, where you have been 30 years ago in this particular field. So,what do you hope to see it do in the future or what do you expect the influence of stress will have on health, let's say 50 years from where we are right now?

Dave:

I might be biased in what I would like to see, but I would say when I started this, stress research was really dominated by only looking at major life events. So what was stressful was something like a death in the family, starting a new job, having a child, you know, these sort of huge events that certainly require adaptation, but they occur just so infrequently that I'm not sure how important those events are in the long scheme of things. And so, our work started with, “Well, what about these sort of more mundane, daily stressors?” We've done that, we started doing that by calling people on the phone. And so every day we would call people on the phone and ask them “What's going on in your life?”

In fact, we've done this now for the past 30 years, we probably have almost 50,000 daily telephone calls from people. Obviously, people aren't talking on the phone anymore. So now this has evolved, the assessment of stress from talking on the phone and telling someone about your stressors to just keeping a log on a smartphone. You know, I would say 10 years ago, that's what everyone started doing is assessing stress on smartphones. Well, now we have all these wearables. So you know, like I'm wearing an Apple Watch right now. And on my Apple Watch, it's telling me like how many steps I need to take, how active I am, how much I stand up or sit down, it helps me track calories.

I think as these wearables evolve, we're also going to be able to measure, I would say, biological responses to stress. And so I think that's where we're at now is trying to figure out how to passively assess stress. But the future. So, here's the future, is that we're going to be able to know in real time when someone's experiencing stress. And so not only will my Apple Watch let me know, oh, think you might be experiencing stress right now. My Apple Watch might send me a message on what I should be doing to help manage that stress. And so it could be, “It looks like things aren't going well right now, Dave, why don't you take a break, practice some deep breathing, maybe to refocus, or try to go out in nature?” These things that help with the stress response. So I think the future is basically going to be, “How do we assess stress in real time?” But also, “How do we help people manage stress in real time?”

Cassie:

That's nice. I hope I get to see what they will end up doing if we're managing stress in real time, because I know I can get stressed really easily. And I have a few methods that have worked, some not so much anymore. So, kind of curious as to how they would be able to evaluate my stress and then say, this is what we recommend you do to help alleviate it a little.

Dave:

And I would say, you know that the future’s almost now. At Penn State, there are several people who are doing these, what's called “just in time interventions” or what we like to call “JITI interventions.” We are trying to come up with an algorithm to try to figure out what's your experience, and then send you some to help you manage that in a healthy way.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Cassie:

So, I was just kind of curious about how you think the relationship between health and daily stress has been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dave:

You know, we are all living through such a historic time that will always be with us. It'll always be part of who we are. And it has all these hallmarks of what makes something really stressful. One is that we have very little control. And there's also this component of the chronicity of it. So, like we don't know when it's going to stop, and that makes it chronic, and so that's another hallmark of stress. And then the third, which concerns me the most and sort of gets back on what I mentioned before, is that it leads to social isolation. To my core, I think that we as a social people, under stress, we're looking to be with other people, but we can't.

But I have hope, and here is why I have hope is that, as I mentioned, I'm very interested in age patterns and stress. And the people who are most at risk because of COVID and the people who are most socially isolated because of COVID are older individuals. And so we would expect that they would be the ones that are experiencing the most stress, but they're not. There's something about, and I've found this in every study that I've done. A true benefit of growing older is the ability to handle daily stress much better than when you were younger. And so, growing older doesn't seem like an optimistic thing to think about. I t's not something that we really look forward to. But this is one area where we really do excel as we grow older.

We figure out ways to expose ourself to less stress and we figure out ways to be less responsive to the stress. And this is true also in the pandemic, in the context of this uncontrollable, chronic, socially isolated stressor. Older adults still have the capacity to dampen their levels of stress compared to younger people. 

Cassie:

Wow. Really makes you think that the phrase like “the older, the wiser you get” is really true. 

Dave:

There's this interesting theory about why it is that older people are better experienced with stress, and it comes down to these two ways of thinking about it. One is “life lived.” The more you live life, the more lessons that you learn and you sort of accumulate this knowledge. And then the other one is “life left.” And the idea that when you have less time on this Earth, knowing that you have less time on this Earth, you want to maximize that time. And I think it's a combination of both. I'm more on the “life lived” camp, but I do think it's interesting to think about both of them, this idea of different time perspective. Really giving you an idea of I really want to make sure that I live life the best that I can, but the more limited time that you have.

Cassie:

Yeah. I definitely, at least right now, I live by the motto of live life to the fullest. I don't want to have any regrets when I think about this opportunity or just where I am right now, five years from now.

Dave:

Cassie, if that is your attitude now, you're going to have an awesome adulthood and older adulthood. Because that’s, you know…I’ m interested in what characterizes successful aging and the successful agers are the ones that really stay active as much as they can, the degree that they can. And basically they're grabbing as much life as they can. Yeah, you're living that now.

Cassie:

Well, thank you. And I hope that it does work out that way for me in the future. If anything, I'll come back and I'll let you know how it's going. (laughs)

Dave:

Please do, please do. I'll have you fill out a diary. That's great.

Cassie:

Perfect, perfect. Works for me. Um…was looking through some of the articles that you have sent me about the work that you've done, there was a lot of mentioning exposure to daily stressors versus responding to daily stressors. Could you just explain a little bit about what the difference is and then how we would be able to identify both of them?

Dave:

Great question. And that question has really sort of guided my research for 30 years. so For me, stress at its most basic elements can be broken down into two parts. The stressors, what I called these pressures that life gives you, the challenges, those are the exposures. Those are things, and for me, because I studied daily stressors, there would be things like having an exam. A very common one for college students is tensions with your roommates. But other ones would be having a lot of work responsibilities. Anytime you have one of those things,  that is an exposure to a stressor. The response to the stressor is the emotional, behavioral and biological response to that thing.

So let's just take a fight with your roommate. How angry were you during that fight? Or even how sad you were, or it could be, like “What is your behavioral response? Did you stomp out of the room? Did you lose sleep that night? Did you indulge in Haagen-Dazs?” Those are behavioral responses, and then these biological responses from what we would call this sympathetic response, which is increase in heart rate and blood pressure. It's a really quick response, or the more longer-term response. This is the increases in cortisol, increases in inflammation. So, it's the exposures, which are important. But on their own, there's very little prediction, at least in my work, in daily exposures to anything health-related. 

We've looked at a whole host of health problems throughout your life from cardiovascular disease to increases in inflammation, even to mortality. The number of these exposures, these number of stressors never predict health. But what predicts health is your responses to them, and mainly emotional responses to them, that's what I mainly study. It's not having roommate problems that could affect your health. It's being angry for a long time about the roommate problem. So there are ways for you to certainly experience that emotional response, but don't let it linger. That's what we sort of have focused on is these lingering emotions. 

The more they linger and the more likely they are to linger, that is the thing that predicts health and wellbeing later on. It's not that exposures aren't important, but they're important in the sense that they trigger these responses. And it's the responses in my world that we try to limit. It would be great to limit the exposures, because then you wouldn't have the response, but anyway. I hope that answered your question.

Cassie: 

No, that definitely does. And I don't know, I just never thought of that it would be the response that's really what's driving your health. That's really interesting.

Dave:

And we've done a lot of work now trying to figure out well, whom and under what conditions do people experience these responses? And personality plays a role, genetics plays a role, but also what's really important is sort of these social structural factors play a role. And so, there's socioeconomic status as a child can play a role in how responsive you are. Your socioeconomic status as an adult also can play a role in the responses. And so we think that these responses might be an important mechanism linking social structural factors to health and wellbeing.

Cassie:

Yeah. Well, because this is part of the CHED podcast, maybe we can dive a little bit more into how your research has related to diversity and evolution.

Dave:

This is a more recent interest that I have. I've become really fascinated by what I call energy mobilization. That when we experience stress, one thing that our body does is mobilize energy to handle that stress. And I think that has evolved with us as a species. But the reason why stress is so unhelpful now is that it's a mismatch between what our bodies have evolved to do in terms of stress, which is mobilize energy. Stressors and sort of that hunter gatherer societies would be okay. The stress of trying to find enough energy to keep us going, that's the stressor. And so, basically it's mobilizing our bodies to get out there and find more food. And at the same time, I don't have a lot of food, so I need to start storing energy, right?

But we don't live in that type of society anymore. Our society is one where our stressors aren't about seeking energy and storing energy, you know. They're about more modern things. Like all of our stressors, a lot of mine at least, occur when I'm sitting down and “I've got to finish this paper,” right? But my body's response to that is very different. And so this is something that I've just become interested in. I don't know enough about it. I'm really curious. My CHED colleagues could probably help me understand this better, but it's certainly an area that I want to explore more. Basically the mismatch of how we've evolved to handle stress and our current-day situations and how we experience stress.

Cassie:

Once you do more on that, I'm definitely going to have to come back and ask about it because I at least know, for me, I also relate to the whole, I feel really stressed when I'm sitting down doing assignments. And I'll get to the point where I'll forego anything my body needs. Food, water, all of that. I'll look at the time, it'll be noon and I'm working on an assignment, and it will be due, I don't know, maybe midnight that day or the next day. And I'll say, okay, at 2:00 I'll stop, go get food. Who knows what? But I keep working and working and the next time I look at the clock, it's around 5:00 and I go, “Oh, whoops! So much for that!” (laughs)

Dave:

So I study cortisol quite a bit. And I started studying cortisol because everyone told me like, well, that's the stress hormone. And people call it the stress hormone is because we see uptakes in cortisol when we're experiencing stress. Well, what I've discovered was, no, cortisol is the energy mobilizing hormone. Cortisol is one of the reasons why you get up in the morning. It's basically telling all sorts of things in your body to increase heart rate, increase glucose production so you can get yourself out of bed. Same thing happens with stress. You experience stress, you get this uptick in cortisol, and basically that's telling your body to get moving, to do stuff. 

We get stressed, and what do we do? We do exactly what you said, like “Stay down, I've got to finish this” when I've got cortisol circulating through my body that's basically telling my body to get up and do something. So my main suggestion to people when they're experiencing stress is do what your body is telling you to do, which is get up and move. When you're experiencing stress, you need to be moving. But oftentimes we live in a society where we can't do that.

Cassie:

Yeah. I'll have to try that more often next time.

Dave:

Just try it out! (laughs)

Cassie:

I'll go on a walk or something.

Dave:

Please do, please! I guarantee it will help. asically, you're doing what your body's telling you to do, and it will help you. I'm a single case study here, but it has certainly helped me.

Cassie:

Since your research does have application in involving humans, how are the practical and ethical components coming into play for that?

Dave:

Yeah, so this is a great question. The types of stressors that we've been talking about are fairly mundane and wouldn't pose risk for people. Talking about having a minor argument with a roommate, not fighting in a parking spot, those sorts of things. But I will ask someone a question and then, one of my standard stress questions, did you just have an argument or disagreement with anyone today? Sometimes those arguments or disagreements are very physically dangerous to people, and they'll tell me about that. And so, I will find out information about people's daily lives that have put them in danger. And so my ethical responsibility is to make sure that they are safe if I have that information. 

Sometimes when I ask people about their emotions, sometimes they have very, very intense, either depressive or anxiety ridden emotions, or even suicidal ideation. If I find that out, I have to be ready to get them information that could help them. And so, I would say that is my biggest concern. Other concerns that I have is that I collect saliva from people in my daily work that involves them chewing on a little piece of sponge. I want to make sure that they do that without choking on the sponge, but I'm not there to help them do that. And so, just basically looking out for the health and wellbeing of any participant in my project to make sure that not only do I not want to do them any harm, but if they are experiencing a high level of distress, to make sure that they get help.

Cassie:

That's really important. And I'm really happy to know that you're one of those people that do check on them and make sure they're all okay throughout the process.

Dave:

Yeah. And sometimes, because I study a lot of older individuals, so people in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, when we do the telephone calls, that is the only call that they have gotten that day. And sometimes is the only social connection that they have that day. And our interviewers are trained to not hang up on them if they still want to keep talking with you. So, we just want to make sure that A, the people are sort of looked after in doing our work, and then also treat them with as much respect and privilege that we have for allowing them to share their lives with us.

Cassie:

Aw. That breaks my heart a little. But I'm really glad that they have some sort of interaction, even if it is just from the study and then everything after, if they decide to continue after all the questions.

Dave:

I've been following the same people now for 30 years. And when you follow people for that long, and you're studying older people, they do pass away. And so, every now and then, we find out that some participant has passed away. And so, we do our best to stay contacted with that family. And we want to find out what were the circumstances of their passing, because it's important for our information. But also let them know how much we appreciated that they shared their lives with us for 30 years. And we really hope, we really hope that they feel that was worthwhile, that they're contributing something to this world by allowing us to ask them all of these questions.

Cassie:

What are your future plans for your research?

Dave:

My main research project is, it's called the National Study of Daily Experiences. This is a study that's been going on for, like I said, 30 years. So, right now we are hopefully going to get funded to follow this wonderful group of adults for another six years. And so, that's the plan, is to do more data collection on these people. And this time, we are not only going to do telephone calls, but we're going to have them fill out experiences about their day on a smartphone. So that's the main thing. 

The other thing that we're doing is doing this sort of work connected with laboratory work of cardiovascular health. And so, I really want to understand, “How is it that stress affects physiology?” And so, I'm working with some wonderful physiologists in the Kinesiology Department here at Penn State, Lacey Alexander, on how daily stress is associated with cardiovascular health.

Cassie:

Nice. So do you have any words of advice for future scientists, psychologists, or researchers? Not just if they want to get involved in this field, but just in general.

Dave:

My advice is to do something that you love. I am so fortunate to be able to have a profession where I get to pursue interesting questions for me that are, hopefully, of some societal importance. But regardless, if it's science, great, do that. But if it's something else, do that. But there's nothing like having a real purpose and a real passion to sort to get you through sometimes the long slog of pursuing your dream. So,  keep working hard, but do what you want to do and do what you love doing.

Cassie:

I think that's really important for people to keep in mind,.

Dave:

But I would say the other thing is try a lot of things out. Both of my parents were elementary school teachers and I thought that's what I wanted to do, until I started doing that. And I realized, ah, that just wasn't for me. And that's when I started doing something else. And so, it was a good lesson for me, is like try stuff out. And if you don't like it, that's not only fine, I think that's great. You could try something else.

Cassie:

And then finally, besides the fact that lifespan psychology did start here, why did you choose Penn State?

Dave:

My PhD advisor and three of my four committee members were graduates of Penn State Human Development, where I work now. And so, all I heard when I was in graduate school was how wonderful Penn State was. And I feel I was this sort of rebellious adolescent saying like, “I will never go to Penn State, I'm just tired of hearing about it.” In fact, after I graduated with my PhD, I could have done a postdoc at Penn State and I said, “No, no, there's got to be another place.” And so, I went to another place and then I realized, “No, there's just too many great opportunities at Penn State.” And it's true. 

So now I have been at Penn state for 19 years. I have lived in State College longer than any other place I've ever lived in my life. The types of colleagues that I have at Penn State are all around the campus. I know of no other university that embraces interdisciplinary work as much as Penn State does. Finally, and most importantly, the students at Penn State are like none other. And I'm not saying that just because you're right there, but…

Cassie:

(Laughing) I’m glad that it’s not just because of me.

Dave:

(Laughing) No, there is such a positive energy of Penn State students that it makes it a joy to be on campus; these energetic, smart, positive students.

Cassie:

Well, thank you for joining me for today's podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Dave:

Ah, thank you, Cassie. This was great. You asked wonderful questions and I hope I didn't go on too long.

Cassie:

I think it was just fine.

Dave:

Bye, Cassie. Take care.

[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]

Mark Shriver:

Tracking Traits is a production of Penn State’s Center for Human Evolution and Diversity. Our producer, audio engineer and musical theme composer is Cole Hons, and our logo was designed by Michael Tribone of mtribone design. 

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